The Hurt Locker. June 26th. Plot: Iraq. Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb.

Great thread! Bookmarked so I can remember these movies, most of them look great.

That's my #1 film this year so far(the book is even better)...Such an atmospheric creepy love story. Everything Twilight wasn't really...and yes, there will be an American version coming next year. I really hope they don't PG-13 it. The Cloverfield director is doing it. If it's good or bad it at least raises the profile of the original, so win/win. 

 Thank you. I was begining to go a bit crazy talking to myself in here so it's nice to have a bit of company...

The main thing was to talk about lesser known movies so you're right on the money with this one. Definite cult potential here with the bleakness, interesting charcter and set designs and Tim Burton's name doesn't hurt either. Is it 3D?

Not that I know of. It'd be nice though, Nightmare Before Christmas was great in 3D.

Mary and Max

Australian Claymation directed by Adam Elliot (who won an academy award for his short claymation Harvey Krumpet) that explores the friendship between a young girl (mary) from Australia and an adult man from New York (max) who suffers from Asperger syndrome. The striking visual style and the more adult tone of the film definitely makes it a niche film despite the fact that several well known actors are in it.

It opened Sundance earlier in the year and its still doing the international festival circuit. Its only in Australian cinemas atm and I have no idea when its going to be released outside of its domestic market.

I was maybe looking forward to Mary & Max a bit too much after loving Harvie Krumpet. For me, it would have worked much better as another short. The animation seemed cruder than Harvie Krumpet and the muted palette was pretty depressing visually. I was expecting the film to burst into full colour if only for a 20 second burst but it never materialised.
Having Philip Seymour Hoffman & Toni Collette as voice talent(not to mention the oscar winning director) should get it at least a limited run in US theatres toward the end of the year.
I try and support Aussie cinema as often as I can :)

The muted pallete was intentional, it made perfect sense considering max's Aspergers.

Claymation is expensive, given the film only had a budget of 8 million I think it was animated pretty much as well as it could have been.

The films issue was its overuse of voiceovers to develop the narrative instead of progressing it with visuals. However it still is one of the better Australian films of the last few years.

I understood the muted palette for Max's side of the story, just thought it would've been nice for Mary's side to have a bit more colour. Everything was just a bit too brown and dull.
Glad you enjoyed it. At least Adam Elliot didn't bugger off to Hollywood after his initial success although i'd like to see what he would do with a bigger budget.